Revelation [FT, Open]

[Sertian]

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

Monsters lay within the vast, unexplored confines of the Gamma Quadrant. Scary things that chased away the sanity of man with their otherness. Consuming beasts that wandered the nooks and crannies of their ancient Empires, unaware of the belittle races which scurried underneath their heal whenever they trod. And yet, many came. Colony after colony, base after base, exploration after exploration. The many horrors that crawled and skittered in the shadows between stars did not deter those who sought to plunder the vast, unclaimed territories of the galaxy in the eternal struggle of their unending thirsts.

One such exploration, not to long ago, traveling through one of the myriad of unassuming, unexplored systems that composed the vast stress of space between the occasional 'outpost' of civilization, returned with happy tidings – a prospect for a venture of some profit for those who sought it. The survey ship had returned with recordings of radio waves, artificial in nature. Thrown into the abyss between stars several years ago, and originating from a yellow dwarf star. Distance analysis of the system as the ship passed by revealed yet another find – a combination of wobbling and light omissions, realized that an Earth-sized planet was transiting in front of the star from their perspective. Further analysis revealed not only was the planet the source of the radio signals, but an analysis of the spectral emissions from the transiting revealed a chemical cocktail that was ripe for Earth-like inhabitants; An oxygen, nitrogen, and water composed atmosphere. A jewel of the galaxy, a garden world within the farthest reaches of civilization.

When the survey ship returned to its port of call, it arrived to news of its discovery filtering throughout the myriad of interstellar communication arrays that were hobbled together by the various races that united the civilized species. Analysis of the radio emissions revealed nothing that linked it to any of the known races and civilizations, furthering the likelihood of an unknown race calling itself home. Further analysis intermingling the sparsity of the transmissions, the limited bandwidth, and the weakness of the signals after their ten year journey, painted a picture of a civilization that had just made the first stumbling steps into the technology of radio-communications. They were making the first steps into the age of information, and likely sometime soon, their first attempts to escape the gravity of their life bearing world.

And, for a while, the news ended there as the powers that be talked and discussed, debated and thought of what to do with this world and its burgeoning people. It became yet another talking point, yet another piece in the game of politics as the decision drew closer and closer for what to do. Until, finally, something else finally upset the delicate balance that had formed around the unknown civilization...

---

Observation Base Alpha, several light-years from System

Bound by agreements and treaties, no one had yet gathered the right to cross within the heliopause of the life bearing system with probe or ship. However, there was nothing stopping those from lurking beyond the edge of the system, listening in on the intermittent signals that lumbered from the system and sorting through the weak, garbled signals to try and analyze whatever information they could garner for whatever decision would eventually be handed down from up high. Attended by mostly automated systems, only a few scientists; anthropologists mostly, inhabited the station as arrays of delicate sensors pointed towards the nearby star. It was, except for the occasional notice or story that circled throughout the news, quiet and peaceful as it waited on its heals to finally move forward. That was, until, it actually became quiet.

In mid communication between a few of the scientists and staff to their friends, families, and colleagues back home, they were all, suddenly, silenced. As seconds turned into minutes, and minutes into hours, dismissal of a short term technical glitch were soon swallowed whole by the unknown fear that something must have gone terribly wrong. Soon the station was in the public eye again as reports leaked that even emergency signals and channels, routine things that reported constantly that the people were alive, and the station was functioning, were silenced. Everything, every little signal that was beamed from the outpost was, in one swift, unexpected instant, silenced...

And, as the modern nations of the galaxy ruffled their feathers and turned their attention towards the mystery, the true powers of the quadrant continued about their business as the ants danced about their feat.

[Weyr]

Weyr Self-Defense Forces Ship AERC-CE-J09
Hyperlight Survey Vessel, Division 'Corinae'
Location Unknown

She was dreaming again, about the Mars-that-was, when the clatter of the telex awoke her. In the dream, she had stood underneath a pale blue sky, on the shore of a lake edged all around with evergreen trees, and watched the geese gently bob on the blue-green water. It was a nice place, that might have existed once, she thought, keeping her eyes closed in the dark while the telex chattered madly close by. Must be something big, she decided, reclining in the thick, plush chair. Other times she dreamed a lake, choked with ash, and brown pine trees dead for so long they had lost not just needles but all of their bark; and a little town of empty streets, beneath a baleful crimson sky. That place did exist, and in a way she much preferred it amongst the two -- it confirmed her sanity for another day. They said that fantasy was a sign of madness, after all, and after two months alone on the edge of known space, sanity was quite precious.

She had been in the system for two days, coasting while the survey probes did their work, after deploying a beacon that would allow any Weyrean ship to translate into the system without the need for extensive calculations. An inbound ship would also, on translating to norm, be able to get the latest on the movement of orbital bodies, as well as any flags left by previous visitors. This system was the twenty-fourth on her list; she had five more to go, before a rendezvous with Corinae, the retrofitted carrier out of which her wing was based, to report on findings and to spend a few weeks relaxing before heading out for another stint out in the black. The job could have been theoretically done by a drone, except that the quality of the intelligence that could be crammed into a drone was rather limited, while more advanced intelligences tended to go quite insane, so a human was necessary to ride herd on the equipment and make decisions from time to time. Humans would sometimes go around the bend as well, but they were cheaper to replace. It was, Alice had decided a month in, a very boring job.

The telex made a few vague rings and thumps, then ceased, as abruptly as it had started. Alice sighed, and finally opened her eyes, considered for a moment the dim consoles and instrument panels, the myriad of status screens and glowing dials, that made up half of her world. All safe, the green and blue hues seemed to say, in the dark of the cockpit. The chronometer said: Thursday - 8:30AM, 305AL. It was, she decided, as good a time as any to wake up; better than most, if it kept her circadian rhythms somewhat in check.

"Lights," Alice said. There was no response. "Lights, dammit, Viaggio. You want me to break my neck?"

There was light then, blinding light, and she squeezed her eyes shut and swore about aberrant pseudo-intelligences and threatened to wipe the main computer stack clear. It was an idle threat, and both she and Viaggio knew it. A sophisticated pseudo-intelligence was, for good or for ill, critical to most complex shipboard tasks. It was not, thank heavens, truly sentient, although it could parse and produce human speech, and could even fake emotions at need. Viaggio was such an intelligence; it was, though she would never admit it, a friend, of sorts.

"You did ask for light," Viaggio pointed out, a tinny voice piped from a speaker somewhere up in the overhead, amidst a tangle of cables and wires. "Suppose it might've been a tad too bright."

"A bit?" Alice asked. "Have you checked the sub-etha transmissions?"

"Nothing. Zip. Nada. So read the damn telegram."

"Right," Alice sighed.

She slowly slid out of the comfy chair, stretched, yawned, walked three steps to the telex printer bolted to the bulkhead by the ladder leading down to the plotting room and quarters. It was quite a long telegram, she noticed, and that they hadn't sent it via sub-etha meant that the captain wanted these orders to stay off-scan, for the moment. Usually, orders came in via the sub-etha mast, routed through the shipboard pseudo-intelligence, which could append any useful data drawn from its memory banks, and could even plot appropriate translation arcs, so that the pilot did not have to waste time digging through archives or working with navigation charts. Since orders for survey ships usually involved going off the assigned route to check something out in greater detail, computer assistance in pulling data was of not a little help. Of course, a low-level pseudo-intelligence could not summarize effectively, nor actually pilot a ship though translation, so the pilot still had to read and process quite a bit of information.

But in this case the orders came via telex, which was quite secure, being routed through an entirely different mode of transmission than was used for the usual broadcasts, and which did not go to any subsystem but went straight to the printer, which overwrote its memory as soon as it finished printing. It also did not, as a rule, get stored in the sender's electronic archives. Thus, Alice suspected, this situation had to involve something special.

So she settled back in her chair at the helm, amidst the myriad of glowing displays and consoles, and started reading, frowning occasionally.

Apparently, a small research station had gone silent, by itself a not uncommon occurrence in a universe that spawned all sorts of previously-unimagined monstrosities with inexplicable regularity. Excluding foul play, a station still could have gone offline for any number of perfectly benign and legitimate reasons. Corinae did not think so.

Something had taken out not just the regular information broadcast any station put out, but the multiply-redundant emergency links as well, completely and without warning. All contact had simply stopped in midstream. A catastrophic failure unnoticed until the fatal moment was physically unlikely. An attack should have been detected, even if it could not be stopped. A station could neither run nor hide, and so was defenseless against a competent opponent, but it should have had time to send out a request for help. Even the Triumvirate of Yut, the oldest and most powerful alliance in known space, could not blow a station so quickly, unless one believed the crazy conspiracy theorists.

But no amount of speculation would bring them closer to the truth. A station had died, and one in which the Self-Defense Forces had some sort of unspecified investment, or at least some sort of interest, and Corinae wanted to know how and why, prioritized in that order.

A hive-class carrier like Corinae was not an easy target, but neither was it a proper ship of the line. Its best defense was speed and stealth, which was why Corinae spent most of its time idling well beyond the edge of an interesting system, performing surveys while its auxiliary vessels explored neighboring systems, just in case there was some sort of danger. Anything that could hit a station without warning, and was willing to do so for no good reason was an immediate threat to Corinae and a long-term threat to all of Weyr, which had to be identified and investigated, and terminated if necessary. Or else Corinae could find itself suddenly exploding like the Allanean muffin. Or more like a cannoli, she supposed.

Alice giggled at that image. The old Hive-class carriers did resemble giant cannolies, with the magnetic launch and recovery tubes running down the long axis, and lots of armor along the sides.

"Wonder what did happen to that station." Alice thought aloud.

"Most likely scenario, with probability fifty-four plus, is encounter with entity possessing weapons substantially beyond station's capabilities; next most-probable scenario is catastrophic sabotage or close-range attack. Want the exact breakdown?"

"Uhn, thank you. Save to file, please. So . . . even odds someone bigger than us whacked that station?"

"Sure, if you gotta be crude."

"Why do you think they're bigger?"

"I don't."

"But you said --"

"If you'd been paying attention, you'd know I said bigger than the station, not us. 'Us' meaning Weyr. Want a replay to refresh your memory, meatbag?"

"Hey, there's nothing baggy about me. And my memory's perfectly fine, I'll have you know."

"I won't push the point. Answering your earlier question, I got no data on that station's defenses and sensors, so I got no idea what'd get through them."

Alice thought for a long moment, looking out past the displays into nothingness. She shook her head, suddenly. "Well, we'll have plenty of time to think about this. Figure a day to clear this solar system, at least. Will have to go on a completely different vector, if this system is where I think it is. Then two long jumps to get us there."

---

Weyr Self-Defense Forces Ship AERC-CE-J09
Hyperlight Survey Vessel, Division 'Corinae'
Observation Base Alpha

She dropped out of translation at near the speed of light, in a momentary brilliance to rival a small sun, falling into norm-space just inside the local Kuiper belt. Alert, said the instruments, blinking bright yellows and crimsons, half the screens hemorrhaging numbers while computers tried to sort through a mad influx of new data, and she toggled switches in quick succession, fighting back nausea, running the numbers in her head -- no time for finer calculations while Viaggio was off-line. She forced a brief brush with the translation interface that bled off much of her initial velocity, along with all of her remaining energy reserves. The ship dissolved, returned to norm-space ten million kilometers away with a more-subdued flare of light, moving now at a somewhat more reasonable velocity.

It was to the bathroom for her then, then, having made sure that there were no planets or ships in the immediate neighborhood, where she heaved up what was left of last night's dinner, and felt disgusted for being glad she did not have to use a paper bag this time. The life of a survey pilot involved lots of boredom, a few moments of excitement, and quite a bit of time throwing up, Alice had found.

The battered survey vessel was now on a ballistic arc through the system, that would in time slingshot it to within a few light-minutes of the charted location of Observation Base Alpha. It was quite a disreputable vessel -- metal girders supporting a mad assortment of vanes, antennas, tanks, tubes, and odd cubes and spheres, missile racks and a vast collection of pods and probes, oversized engines reminiscent of ancient rockets, and a scarred ablation shield. It broadcast a light-speed message on dropping in-system, automated in the event something happened to the pilot.

Greetings! This is the Weyr-Self-Defense Forces Survey Ship 'Journey-Nine,' to all listeners. We received report of a problem on Observation Base Alpha -- the station in this system, so here I am. Please respond and relay.

It would take at least an hour, possibly more, for the broadcast to reach Observation Base Alpha, sent as it was by mere radio waves. Assuming the station was still there; the computers were still working through the inflow of data. In the meanwhile, Alice went to take a quick shower, after waking up Viaggio and asking him to keep an eye out for anything coming their way. Computers with even the least bit of potential sentience almost universally experienced breakdown if taken through translation while on-line.

[Nova Atlantis]

Ari realized he missed a lot of things since coming out here. He missed blue skies, cool breezes, friends and family…

But particularly, he missed being able to sleep in. Or being on a regular sleep cycle at all. And the second the beeping started, throwing him out of his deep slumber, he swore with every fiber of his being that he was going to kill that damned AI. That was of course a four seconds before he was cogent enough to remember that ripping out the AI’s blue box would mean he’d have to run the ship all on his own. For the next however many months he would remain out here. By himself. With no one to talk to.

Alone.

That gave him pause.

“…Eight standard hours, Xil. Is eight standard hours too much to ask for from you?” he muttered groggily, swinging himself out of bed.

A foot-tall blue holographic woman appeared on his desk over on the other side of the room, “Sorry. We arrived a bit earlier than I anticipated”

Ari nodded, rubbing his face as he yawned, "Status?" The Atlantean stood up, swaying as he worked to find his balance. Humanoid and brown-skinned, it would have been difficult to pick an Atlantean apart from a human, if it weren't for the lack of hair pigment. Other variations that had been afforded to their species, such as the two and a half century lifespan, were less conspicuous. It was either convergent evolution at its finest, or something fishy had happened in the distant past...a discussion that had been ripping apart the science council for almost a decade now.

The AI’s figure evaporated from the desk as Ari moved into the shower, her voice still operating over the ship’s com, “We have arrived on the outskirts of the designated system. However, this system is not in our database. Atlantean knowledge of the Gamma Quadrant is…lacking”
Ari started up the water, “Well, we kind of knew that coming out here. What have your scans picked up?”

“Standard G class star system. There is an Eden class world with a moderately developed pre-spaceflight civilization, if their radio waves are anything to go by”

“Boring. Any sign of our target?”

There was a pause, “…No. I am sorry. The jump trails have gone cold” The sound of running water dominated the room for a moment, before Xil picked up on a barely audible but impressive string of curses. At least two of them weren’t even in her database. To say that Ria was upset was an understatement of a galactic scale.

“Eight weeks. Eight goddamn weeks” Ria said, his voice raising after his fist met the shower wall, “Eight long goddamn weeks, and it’s all one big wild goose chase!” he sighed, turning the water off, continuing in a lower tone “…What are we doing out here, Xil?”

The AI seemed a bit perplexed, “…We are on a mission from the imperial office to locate and escort Atlantean survivor groups back to the new homeworld”

“I meant what are WE doing out here, Xil?” asked Ria. He stepped out of the shower and went for his clothes, “We’ve been out here for over a year. This is the first hit we’ve gotten, and it turns out it’s a goddamn goose chase. I mean…shit, why would anyone fly this far out? Every other surviving group was found within five thousand light-years of Cirrus” he stepped back out of the bathroom, now fully-clothed in casual wear. Essentially a t-shirt and pants, it was…comfortable for him. Far more than the standard uniform, anyway. Ria was never big on regulations anyway; especially not out in the ass end of nowhere. Fourteen months of living by yourself had a tendency to reduce your daily presentation even among special operatives.

Ria was a Knight, a special soldier in the fleet. Envisioned as the fleet’s answer to Jedi and other such ‘elite one-man armies’ that did various errands that needed to be done, Knights were developed after the war—in fact, Ria was one of the first generation. He was the product of two decades of intense training, as well as a rather painful (and potentially leathal) procedure which saw his body infused with Orichalicum, essentially giving him powers. Maintaining that metabolism was hell, though. That reminded Ria. He was hungry.

“The Empress didn’t want to miss anyone. She is very concerned about possible survivors that fled too far and never made it back home” the AI countered, still dealing with the discussion they had found themselves in.

Ria opened his replicator. He grumbled; everything that came out of a replicator tasted like ass. Little wonder that it wasn’t used much outside of the military. He began pressing buttons as he replied, “Yeah, yeah. But sometimes you just gotta know when to fold them. Finding a handful of people in the entire Gamma Quadrant is like that whole needle and a haystack business. At least within the Orion arm, we had descent starcharts and a much smaller ground to cover. And more populated systems. I don’t know about you, but I miss civilization. I miss life. I miss…

A ding let Ria know his food was ready. Opening the door, he pulled out what supposedly passed for fish. “…I miss food”

“Do you regret taking this role?” asked Xil, her hologram having returned to the desk.

Ria’s shoulders sagged as he put his plate on the desk. “I just…I thought I’d be doing more important things. Stuff I could tell grandkids about someday. ‘my grandpa was a superhero!’ You know, that kind of shit. Instead I’ve spent almost a year and a half scanning lifeless systems half a galaxy away. I just…I feel like my life is slipping away. It’s slipping away, and no one even notices because I’ve fallen off the grid”

“The Empress deemed this important. You should know she is very frugal with her resources”

Ria sighed, “Yeah…I guess” he said, before taking a bite, “…Sweet gods, I miss real food” He ate in silence for a moment, before Xil spoke up again.

“…There is…something else that should be brought to your attention”

“Hrpgh?” Ria asked, his mouth stuffed full of synthetic fish meat.

As the AI continued, she brought up a holographic map of the system next to her. A blinking light appeared out in the system’s Oort Cloud, “On our approach, I picked up on signals originating from a research outpost on the terminus of this system. Approximately two hours ago, all transmissions ceased”

Now it was Ria’s turn to be perplexed. The knight sat down, leaning in to take a closer look at the display, as he stuffed another fork-full of food into his mouth, “…Where they attacked? Could our targets have been attacked too?”

Xil shook her head, “Unlikely. I would have been able to track Atlantean ship signatures. And the base itself…it’s almost as if it just stopped existing. There were no distress signals, no emergency beacons, they just…stopped transmitting”

“Think they’re being blocked?”

The AI shook her head again, “If they are, it’s by a method I don’t recognize. Even the most advanced jamming technology I know of would leave some sort of interference I could detect. This is like…it’s as if the station no longer exists”

“Interesting” Ria finished his breakfast and put the plate to the side as he sat back in his chair. He was in a significantly better mood now. A mystery! And he was right in the middle of it. Maybe he’d get a story out of it. “Any idea who owns the station?”

“Unknown” Xil responded, “Atlantean databases are…lacking in xenostudies. It was likely for monitoring the development of the younger culture planetside, however”

“Ah, the downside of being a quiet isolationist state” Ria said, getting up. Leaving his room, he headed for his ship’s cockpit, “Plot us a course to the station. Let’s see what’s going on”

“Protocol states remaining invisible to the galactic community if possible” the AI replied, a bit urgently, “We do not want to risk larger warlike powers becoming interested in us”

Ria scoffed, “What, out here in the Gamma Quadrant? That’d be one hell of a supply chain. Besides, if people are in trouble, it behooves us to assist. I am supposed to protect and serve, after all”

“…Then I highly recommend initiating first contact protocols” Xil said after a bit of deliberation, her form appearing on the cockpit’s dashboard as Ria took a seat. Holographics controls came to life as they responded to his proximity.

He nodded, “Do it. And take us to yellow alert while we’re at it. If there IS something out there, we don’t want to be caught with our pants down”

----

A speck of dust in the stellar wind, the Aphelion was a modified version of the standard Messenger class shuttlecraft. Jump engines had been installed, as well as a number of major weapons, making the ship much bigger than it would have otherwise been. The interior was completely redesigned as well, converting the storage bays into living quarters. That said, it was still a tiny ship, less than forty meters in length. The silver avian vessel, accented by the glowing blue lines of orichalic that crisscrossed the ship and powered its various systems, slowed its approach into the system. Moments later, spacetime itself buckled and ruptured as white light shown forth from the hole, flanked by swirling blue energy. The shuttle shot into the hole, and would moments later emerge from an identical one on the other end of the system, a few thousand kilometers away from the station’s last known location, where it would scan profusely as it cautiously approached.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t be sighted as the culprits responsible for the destruction of the base.

That would just be silly.

[Sertian]

Observation Post Alpha System

At the very limits of the small system, coalesced around a weak dwarf star, barely large enough to burn its hydrogen fuel in nuclear fire, the observation post hovered – slowly orbiting past the few planets that accreted out of their parent's nursery, past the thin cloud of discarded comets and asteroids that never participated in the planetary birth millions of years ago. It hovered there, rather than in the system that held the scientific community's eyes out of a political compromise. No one could agree on just where the 'end' of the system could be classified for purposes of positioning the station, how far it would have to be to prevent the civilization within from discovering they were being watched. So it was out of frustration that it was decided to place the station around the nearest stellar body, hidden by the emissions of its anchored star, while close enough to continue observing the radio emissions of the emerging people until a compromise was finally breached on how to handle them.

It was a remarkably simple station, built to be efficient, modestly comfortable for a small crew of scientists and technicians. Gravity was provided by the rotation of the habitation and work modules around the dense ball of metal that housed the fusion power plant which provided energy for the station so far away from the system's star. A brief glance at the station from either ship would reveal the fact that the crew module was still 'warm', and could be assumed that life support was still running – a possibility that the crew was still alive. The power plant of the station, however, would reveal to be cold. The machine's nuclear flame extinguished when the station first dropped communications; the power plant now only glowing with the heat of its previous output, slowly lost as it radiated into space. At a glance it was undamaged, nothing that would have indicated a sudden loss in communications. No explosions marred the frame, no holes within the hull. It was as pristine as if it had just been placed there.

However, there was one thing that was unusual. The station wasn't totally quiet. As both ships cruised throughout the system, a low powered, repeating radio signal was broadcasting into empty space. It's source originating from a bundle of machines and devices cobbled together and pushed out of the station's air lock, left to orbit past the crew module as it was anchored to the hull by a cable. The radio's transmission was simple, elegant, and precise; three short beeps, three long beeps, and another three short beeps before it repeated.

[Weyr]

Out of Character:

Am playing around with time somewhat for the sake of not unduly delaying the plot. Can change if necessary.

---

Weyr Self-Defense Forces Ship AERC-CE-J09
Hyperlight Survey Vessel, Division 'Corinae'
System: Observation Post Alpha

An hour passed since she sent the first message on translating into the system, then two. Alice kept Journey on a ballistic course which would take her past the station and through the inner system, using the sun to slingshot out into interstellar space in a month or so, depending on the gravitational influence of various objects in the solar neighborhood. She did not worry too much about such things for the moment, partly because the computers were still refining their calculations and plotting all the various astronomical bodies, and mostly because the velocity dump had sucked her firien cells dry. Power from the fusactor allowed her to make course corrections, and to bleed off linear velocity, but without a respectable charge she could not initiate translation, which made her a sitting duck if things went south. Luckily, she had not been fired on, so the locals were either not particularly trigger happy, or were waiting for a more opportune moment to blow her out of the sky. But two hours was plenty of time for the transmission to have reached the station, and anyone else within a light-hour of her initial translation point, to make up their minds and send back a reply, in whatever form they pleased, all without having to interrupt dinner.

Over the preceding two hours, Alice had deployed Journey's motley assortment of antennas, and grabbed whatever broadcasts were floating in space, as per the manual. Inhabited systems were usually full of such broadcasts -- routine traffic chatter, soap opera reruns, outdated newscasts, and various other things no-one usually bothered to encrypt. Such broadcasts usually kept going in an ever-expanding sphere around a solar system, and allowed for some interesting retrospective observations, for those who wanted to watch television from a hundred years ago. More pertinently, a skilled observer could assemble the myriad of time-lagged broadcasts to paint a picture of the state of a system in the past, and then run a projection into the future with fair accuracy.

Excepting the distress signal, there were no broadcasts to grab; the system was a veritable information void. Had she not known otherwise, Alice would have assumed that the system was uninhabited. Not even the ice-pushers that would supply a station with fuel were transmitting -- an unthinkable breach of all civilized protocols, exposing other ships and the station to risk of collision. Probability was against any two ship colliding; space was vast, and a minor vector change was sufficient to completely avoid any unintentional impact; but there was little reason to run the risk without a good reason.

"I don't think there's anyone here," Alice said softly, leaning back in the cushions, amidst a myriad of displays and screens.

"Behold!" Viaggio declared from an overhead speaker. "The genius of an organic mind."

"I just hoped that maybe the locals are quiet, or something. Never know."

"No inscrutable biological rationalizing? No false hope?"

"I'll have you know that I'm perfectly sane. And I absolutely do not exhibit false hope. All of my hope is perfectly legitimate. Well, maybe some of my hope. But not this one." Alice waved her hand in mock dismissal. A new screen flashed up, lights blinking from yellow to green. The beacon which would allow her to talk to Corinae was ready for deployment. "Hold up, beacon's programmed."

A proper Weyrean faster-than-light array could not cost-effectively be fit into a ship as small as Journey without causing all manner of problems. But a cheap beacon could anchor itself right in the sub-etha. Its range was only sufficient to talk to ships in the nearby stellar neighborhood, but that was sufficient for surveyor purposes. A chain of such beacons even allowed for communication with Sol, albeit low-bandwidth and quite slow. A jump-capable ship such as Corinae could also quickly jump to such a beacon if necessary.

"Think it'll explode?" Viaggio asked.

"Gods, you're morbid," Alice said. Not that the pseudo-intelligence did not have a point.

A beacon was not in and of itself dangerous, consisting of a sub-etha communications array, a few light-speed communications arrays, and a cheap fission pile to power the whole assembly, mounted on a chemical rocket that would move it to a convenient spot in the system. The rocket was her main source of worry. Most had come from obsolete missiles even older than her ship, and sometimes older than Corinae itself, which made them older than quite a few nations. Alice thought she had good cause to believe the stories passed along by survey pilots of what the real reason was for Corinae refusing to pick up a survey ship that had not deployed all of its beacons. Besides which, the Captain would not be terribly happy if she were to blow up her ship up during a beacon deployment.

But there was no use in worrying over such things. Alice told the computers what to do with a handful of keystrokes. Like most Weyrean ships, Journey-09 was mostly automated. There was little sense in forcing the pilot to calculate trajectories by hand, although like most survey pilots Alice would do that now and again, and see if she couldn't beat the computer for efficiency. She hadn't managed to, though not for lack of trying, mostly because of boredom, and also because Corinae's surveyors had a pot going to see who could manage it. The pot had been going for as long as Corinae had been in the exploration business, and no-one so far had managed to claim it.

A series of clamps released the beacon -- a vaguely spherical object mounted on a rocket; a pulse of maneuver thrusters sent it moving away from the ship. At a sufficient distance, it rolled over, and lit off its main drive. It would take some time for it to reach the proper coordinates and deploy.

While waiting for the beacon to deploy, or for something else to happen, Alice went into the little galley and nuked a sandwich, which was really nutrient paste in the form of a sandwich and tasted vaguely like tuna that had been kept out in the sun for too long. Then she settled back in front of the displays, and sipped synthetic coffee through a straw, while trying to coax some additional information about the station from scan. Rumor had it that the original layout for survey vessels like Journey had a real galley, stocked with real food. Those had been removed to make room for additional non-perishable stores, mostly nutrient paste, when exploration command extended deployment times. Command, in its eternal wisdom, had not bothered to change what the survey vessels stocked when it reduced their crew complement from four to one. Which was why Alice had enough nutrient paste, and various items made from that paste, to last her all the way back to Sol. Supposedly there were people who liked the stuff; Alice thought they were insane.

Scan was not cooperative. The power plant appeared to be offline, if the estimates by Journey's computers were correct and the station really was powered by a fission pile. Which did not explain why the power plant was out, or when. Possibly, the power plant had gone offline concurrently with the broadcasts; but that depended on assumptions that Alice could not verify. And if the power plant was out, the station had to be running on auxiliaries to maintain life support, assuming the life support was still working. The station torus was radiating heat, which might have meant that life support had not been compromised, or it might have simply meant that life support had been compromised in a manner not apparent to the outside observer. Alice did not want to draw any unwarranted conclusions which could, down the line, cause her to make mistakes and, quite possibly get her killed. Without access to Corinae's databases, ultimately Alice only had estimates, backed by a long list of assumptions on which she could not rely.

Even the distress signal was unhelpful, assuming it was a distress signal and not a request for a pizza delivery or something else equally irrelevant. There was no reason why the station's computers were sending a simple tonal message, rather than something infinitely more useful. Any modern shipboard computer system could analyze a situation and compile a decently detailed emergency broadcast; there was no reason a modern station would not fit such a system into a distress capsule with its own backup power. The whole situation was inexplicable, and liable to turn pear-shaped in a hurry, in Alice's opinion.

She had Journey dump velocity once more, then dozed off little by little to the thrum of the fusactors that had been a part of her life for months, coffee packet in hand . . . .

Lights flashed orange; the contact alert sounded. She lurched awake and squeezed the packet in surprise, squirting coffee all over the cockpit, even as her eyes went to the local scan screens.

"New contact, stand by," Viaggio announced.

"Bearings, dammit," the displays were lagging behind the scan data, as always.

"Four hundred fifty thousand kilometers plus. Spacial distortion at ...."

"Close," Alice muttered, as the numbers flashed up. They had not been in any imminent danger. Even if they had been, the pseudo-intelligence could have interfaced with the engines and changed their vector before she had time to react. She went quickly to get a towel to wipe up the coffee before it got into the electronics, and to put on a clean coverall.

"Pretty effect," she said, replaying the external video recording. "Tactical warp, you think?"

"That would make sense."

"Shiny. Interesting design, too. Run it against known ship types, please? Would be good to know what it is."

"Already done. FTL drive signature and ship design suggest Atlantean origin."

"Who?"

"A close relative of homo-sapiens, native to the Orion arm. Limited contact in known space ceased due to local cataclysm and/or fractal event. Entry ends."

Which was not terribly helpful. 'Close relative' could mean anything, and might be based on any number of discredited theories or faulty information centuries out of date. Nor did 'contact' necessarily mean any sort of direct communication; a single film or communication available on Sol's myriad of data networks was sufficient. Journey's databases had only a few lines devoted to any given known species or nation, along with known drive and starship profiles. Corinae's database was coextensive with available Weyrean knowledge in most areas; but the carrier was so far away that it might as well not have been there.

Alice speared a new coffee packet with a straw, and sucked on it thoughtfully. She was dealing with a humanoid species, most likely; and prior knowledge meant that either they shared a language or that one of them would have the translation handy for one. Which should make communication fairly straightforward, assuming they did not decide to shoot her. Her velocity was down to a crawl now, at least by spacer standards, and the distance was short enough that a hostile could plot her trajectory with frightening accuracy, and her only warning would be a mass proximity alert. More likely, she would not even realize that anything was wrong. By all rights, it was prudent that she initiate contact before they decided that she was a potential threat.

Greetings, Atlantean ship. This is the Weyr Self-Defense Forces Survey Ship 'Journey-Nine' broadcasting. Surveyor First Class Alice Katsuko speaking. We received report of a problem on Observation Base Alpha, the only station in this system. It's been broadcasting a distress signal for some time now, but I haven't been able to raise it on com. Would you happen to know anything about what happened here?

[Nova Atlantis]

Still nothing.

The Aphelion continued its course, scanning continuously for information on the station. As the ship got closer, it obtained its shape and precise location…and then things began to get weird. The main generator was off, but signs pointed to life-support still being operational. That was simple enough to explain—maybe there was a backup battery that hadn’t been detected, or maybe the station hadn’t had time to dissipate its internal heat yet, like the generator. But then there was the fact that the station was, as far as Ria and Xil could tell, completely undamaged. No reason, on the outside at least, for the station’s shutdown. And if there was a backup battery, wouldn’t the crew have used it to signal for help?

The most unusual fact however, was the faint signal the Aphelion was now picking up adjunct to the station. Some sort of code? No, too regular. Too uniform. Not unless the message being sent was absurdly small. The object transmitting the signal—why was it there? Did those on the station send it out when communications went down? Were they still alive after all? How long would they hold out if it turned out that life support wasn’t online?

Ria listened to the beeping for a few moments, before he had just had enough and silenced the recording. “Okay, yeah. The creepy silent station in an abandoned dwarf system? That’s one thing. I can handle that. But that? The beeping? That shit creeps me out. It’s like one too many ghost stories I’ve heard”

“Having second thoughts?” asked Xil, a bit of playful banter slipping through her normally academic persona. She knew his answer even before she saw the eye-roll. Ria, while honest with his feelings (often, too honest. Especially in public) was never one to turn away from a good mystery or adventure. Curiosity would override caution anyday. If anything, it was amazing he was still alive after a few of his escapades.

Ria laid back in his seat, putting his feet up on the dashboard and his hands under the back of his head. “As if. First chance to leave the ship in weeks, and you’re suggesting we turn tail? What kind of exploratory spirit is that?!”

“I was not suggesting anything. I was simply—” Xil stopped mid-sentence, as if suddenly preoccupied, “…I am detecting another ship incoming. Rather, it will intercept us shortly after arriving at the station”

Ria shot back up, his earlier playful face replaced by a more serious one. An unknown vessel with unknown intentions, lingering about the same area? Ria quickly planned out several ways this could go, and he didn’t like most of them. What if they thought his people attacked the station? Worse, what if they were part of whatever was responsible? “What?!” he asked, a bit worried, leaning in to the holographic ship controls, “Who are they? Can we get a visual?”

“Unknown. It is a smaller vessel, however. Putting visual on the viewscreen” A shot of the opposing ship appeared on the screen where the viewport would have been, above the control dashboard. Ria looked it over for a moment, trying futilely to identify it. No luck. He dropped back in his seat, his hands cradling the seat’s armrests.

“Why didn’t you detect them earlier?” asked Ria, a bit annoyed. He made a slightly judgmental glare at Xil’s holographic figure.

She simply rebuked him, “My attentions were focused on the station. One personal ship in an entire system is, as you like to say, a needle in a haystack”

He sighed, knowing she was right. Backing off, he changed the conversation slightly, “Have they spotted us?”

“Unknown. If they have, they have not yet made any attempt at acknowledging us”

Ria thought for a moment, his left hand rubbing his nose and chin. His mind raced with ways to get out of this potential shitstorm. The Aphelion was too small of a vessel to have a cloaking device, and Ria had always been a bit annoyed by that. They could afford cloaking devices for capital ships, who had the weapons and shields capable of fending off large-scale attacks, but the little ships who were vulnerable had to do without? Ships used by special operatives? And he knew the Empress’s personal shuttle and defense squadron had new fancy cloaks, so it wasn’t like it was really IMPOSSIBLE…

“They are hailing us” Xil said, interrupting his tangent.

Ria grimaced. He was in it now, whether he wanted to be or not. He nodded, “…Let’s hear it”. As Xil played the message, Ria’s worries deflated a bit. This was natural—Xil knew Ria was always a bit of a worrier, always conducting the worst possible things that could happen and assuming they were the most likely courses of action. Now aware the other ship was most likely not out to kill them, Ria began formulating a response in his head. The worry however, was now replaced by butterflies. Ria was about to speak to an outsider as a representative of his species. Though he did wonder how they knew of his people. Had they had any previous encounters? Ringing his hands, he nodded again, “Xil…open a channel”

---

“This is the AIV Aphelion, Knight operative Ria, House Aia speaking. We took notice of the station after jumping into this system. We’ve been scanning the station repeatedly since jumping in, but I’m afraid we don’t know much more than you do, if anything at all. Just that the situation isn’t adding up. The closer we look, the less sense things make. …Perhaps a joint investigation is in order?”

[Weyr]

Weyr Self-Defense Forces Ship AERC-CE-J09
Hyperlight Survey Vessel, Division 'Corinae'
System: Observation Post Alpha

Alice kept an eye on local scan, while waiting for the reply, whether from the Atlantean ship or from the station, just in case things went badly pear-shaped slowly enough for her to react. The universe was not peaceful; some of its members had an unfortunate habit of shooting first and forgetting about the questions. A survey ship relied on its superior acceleration to maintain distance and confuse hostile fire control. At low velocity, within the light-second envelope where time lag was only a minor factor, without sufficient combined velocity and capacitor reserve to initiate translation or boost to near-c, Journey was a prime target. Which made worrying about such things overmuch utterly unproductive; Alice did not bother fretting about things beyond her control.

She prodded the diagram of the station, assembled by the computer from visual observation and from active scan, with unobserved points filled in based on known designs and engineering constraints. Given sufficient time and the proper scanners, the computers could find every minute defect on the station's hull. But that would have required using the high-power radar, which was no different from a military-grade guidance radar, albeit a rather obsolete one even by Weyrean standards; Alice had no intention of giving anyone a reason to fire on her, especially if she gained nothing in the process.

There were two docking points -- in the computer's rather reliable estimate, docking ports tending toward a universal shape and appearance. They were on opposite sides of the station torus, which meant that the two ships could not fire on one another without potentially blowing the station, but also meant that whoever went aboard would have a bit of a walk. It was not, thank the gods, a large station. Alice could always cut through the hull -- a survey ship carried basic repair tools, including a cutting torch that could draw power directly from the ship's capacitors, just in case a surveyor wanted to cut through armor plate or incinerate a man at twenty feet. Or to be blown to little bits. One never knew with two-hundred-year-old tools. But Alice was quite certain that the Captain would bust her down quite a ways if she depressurized a still-inhabited station, so that course of action was out of the question.

The reply came back, disrupting Alice's thoughts. She ran it through the translation software, played it back twice to make sure she caught everything.

“This is the AIV Aphelion, Knight operative Ria, House Aia speaking. We took notice of the station after jumping into this system. We’ve been scanning the station repeatedly since jumping in, but I’m afraid we don’t know much more than you do, if anything at all. Just that the situation isn’t adding up. The closer we look, the less sense things make. …Perhaps a joint investigation is in order?”

That sounded sane and sensible, Alice thought, which was a very welcome development. It could also be a trap, but Alice was unwilling to engage in that degree of paranoia just yet.

Sounds like a plan, Aphelion. Want the first honors, or shall I dock first? Suggest one of us hang back and observe for a bit, just in case the station explodes or turns out to be full of orkz or something. No sense in both of us failing to report, ne? Anyway, am appending the frequency and code for my suit-com, so pick who goes first and let's get on with it! Unless you have a better idea, in which case let's go with that one. I'll be alongside in ten minutes or so either way.

She would have offered to dock first, but protocol absolutely prohibited dictating action to a new contact. So the guy on the other side had a choice of either waiting the ten minutes it'd take for Journey to cover the remaining distance and match vectors with the station, or going first with Journey to cover him. Which choice he made, or if he offered some third option, would tell Alice just how paranoid the other side was, or how suicidally brave. Go under the guns of an unknown ship? Alice would do so in an instant, knowing that Corinae would investigate if anything happened to her. Bu the other side might not be quite so willing to risk their rather shiny ship.

[Nova Atlantis]

OOC: I hope nobody minds me skipping straight to the docking. Tell me if you have an issue, I'll edit.

---

So. He had first choice. Lucky for him.

In reality, he had none. Atlantean foreign policy (such as it was) was to be as accommodating as possible. …Within reason, of course. Giving away the homeworld was still seen as treason. It had become a bit of a self-defense mechanism--the utter shock the Federation had felt at its near-destruction still hadn’t worn off. Atlantis still hadn’t quite gotten over going from an interstellar (albit sleeping) superpower to a depopulated backwater, nor the xenocidal invasion that had caused it. Suddenly dozens of systems became a single one. Billions of people became millions. Thousands of warships became just over a hundred and fifty. They hadn’t been able to stop their enemies at the height of their power, when they thought they were invincible—‘Fortress Cirrus’ they had called it. And now with only a fraction of that power, they felt naked against the cold unforgiving darkness of space. And so if isolationism failed—as was the case here—the alternative was appeasement to the point that it did not deteriorate further defenses.

Not that Ria was completely against the idea. Adventure, mystery. The chance to be awesome. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a bit freaked out what may or may not have been waiting for him, but he was confident enough in his own skills–and Xil’s—that he figured he’d live to fight another day.

“…Eh, why not?”

Why not indeed. Lucky for him, the station’s docking ports were fairly standard—no hull-cutting necessary. All Atlantean ships were equipped with transporters of course, but they were strictly for non-sapient materials. The Atlanteans had a taboo about transmitting their data across distances—the person coming out the other side wasn’t strictly speaking the one going in. There were matters of the soul to consider.

Ria watched his ship approach the station on the map. It looked like he was going to make it to the station first anyway. Nodding to himself, he returned the message.
---
“Feel free to hold back, ‘Journey-Nine’. We’ll go ahead and secure the first docking port. I am transmitting over my own com signature. If everything checks out, I’ll signal you. We can meet somewhere on the station. Aphelion out”

---

Sid shut off the com link and blew some air through his teeth, thinking for a moment, “…What am I getting myself into?” he asked outloud, to no-one in particular. A moment later, he got up and headed back to his quarters. “Xil, ready my armor. I’m going for a walk”

“What enhancements should I install?”

“Just the usual. Basic Orichalic enhancements, basic tech mods. I’m not going in looking to bust some heads. Just recon, diplomacy, and hopefully rescue. Speaking of, transmit a request to dock to the station. If they don’t answer, keep doing it. Just on the slim off-chance”

“Understood”

---

A few moments later, a lightly-but-full-bodied-armored figure stepped out of his room back into the main ‘hallway’ of the ship, the small catwalk that connected the main quarters to the cockpit. The armor was designed for maneuverability and agility. It was thick enough be ‘armored’, but very form-fitting. Black and dark silver armor, with blue painted areas, and again accented by blue lights—the soft blue glow of Orichalicum. Designed for both combat and depressurized environments, it was an adherent to the Atlantean tradition of hitting two birds with one stone. On his belt, Ria had attached a single pistol—a safeguard, just in case. For a brief second he had considering something heavier, but decided against it, for obvious reasons.

Pulling up the floor in the hallway, Ria revealed a latter, which he used to drop down into the shuttle’s lower deck, a grab-all place where all the utilities lay—the storage bay (all eight feet of it), the transporter to the left, and an engine…er…closet behind him. And of course to the right was the ship’s airlock. The knight entered and shut the chamber behind him. Inside, Ria took a deep breath under his helmet, before crossing over to the other side, completely unaware as to what he would find.

[Sertian]

Dead. That was an apt term to describe what Ria might have noticed as he entered the air lock, opened to the outside to allow him to slip into the vacuum held back by a single bulk head. The station was dead. Screens and displays, what once flickered with electronic light and allowed for easy access and control to the station's mechanics all lay silent. A garish mix when combined with the utter silence the vacuum offered the exploring Atlantean at the start of his adventure. Fortunately, the station's builders were nothing but practical, and an alternative was easily sought. On one of the walls to the air lock a panel had been pried open, revealing behind it a series of levers and controls, all of them neatly labeled for their function. An obvious, and used, manual overrides to utilize the air lock.

Beyond the bulkhead a single clear opening in the door, a windows of a sort, allowed a brief glimpse into the station beyond. Enough to see that, at least for the immediate area beyond the air lock, the station's lights were out – leaving the corridors and what might be lurking within them to Ria's darkest imaginations. There was, however, one exception to this fact. A single light source, a pale red glow that descended on a portion of the room beyond, but it did little to discourage the darkness that had taken root within the 'dead' station.

If he continued, following the labeled and easy to follow instructions next to the controls, it was a simple, if long, process to open the air lock's hatch. A long, slow turning of a wheel-like object slowly drew the hatch behind him to a close as the vague, muffled sounds of the shifting mechanical gears straining against the weight of the air proof door. The hatch eventually drawing into place, announcing with a soft click that that it was sealed into place - the only indication of such as the electronic panel next to the controls was as dead as the previous one's the Atlantean had seen. Next came the sudden whoosh of atmosphere flowing into the room as hatches behind ventilation grates opened, slowly measured by a barometer within the opened panel, showing the pleasure slowly inching towards a comfortable one atmosphere before drawing to a close. At last there was only the door in front of him to bare his way, with the wheel controlling the door now unlocked from whatever mechanical process had prevented it from being used until the door behind him was sealed. And this time with an atmosphere to convey it, he was aware of just how much noise was made as that door slowly slid up, the churning of gears straining against the mass of the thick, heavy plate of steel. Surely, anything that was lurking in the station was now quite aware there was prey cornered and waiting in the air lock.

---

Back outside the, no doubt curious, AI controlled ships likely continued to probe the station with their sensors, trying to gather whatever information they could find to help their biological passengers before they moved into the station proper. The Atlantean shuttle, with its proximity docked next to the station, would eventually discover that the station's hull was slightly irradiated. A not too unusual phenomena, given the particle soup that composed deep space, but something that far exceeded the normal expectations for how long the station had been in the area. Curiously, only about a half of the station's hull had suffered the inexplicable process. Fortunately, the levels were far to low to harm anyone in a standard EVA suite...

[Weyr]

Weyr Self-Defense Forces Ship AERC-CE-J09
Hyperlight Survey Vessel, Division 'Corinae'
System: Observation Post Alpha

“Feel free to hold back, ‘Journey-Nine’. We’ll go ahead and secure the first docking port. I am transmitting over my own com signature. If everything checks out, I’ll signal you. We can meet somewhere on the station. Aphelion out”

"Good luck," Alice wished, and meant it wholeheartedly.

"Brave bastards," Viaggio agreed.

She did not know the person on the other side; under the wrong circumstances, she would not have hesitated to do her best to blow him out of the sky. But at the moment he was a fellow pilot-investigator and sapient, which made all the difference, in a tradition dating back to before Weyrean starflight, of enemy rescuing enemy and parting under truce. It was simply a bigger sky, and a more hostile one. There were of course the fungoid orkz, but there was no dealing with some species except with a flamethrower.

She dumped the station diagrams to secondary screens, shifted nav and helm and scan to the main displays. The approach curves had not changed since she had first calculated it hours ago. There was no reason for them to have changed. But she re-ran the numbers anyway, then eyeballed the results just in case. A surveyor could not match a modern computer system for speed, precision or accuracy in plotting a course. That did not stop surveyors from trying; there was a sizable pot back on Corinae for the person who could beat a computer to a decent plot, which had not been collected in all the years Corinae had been running survey. But a good surveyor had to be able to figure numbers fast enough. The numbers checked out, as they should have.

On scan, Aphelion approached the station, presumably proceeded to dock. Alice could have watched the process through Journey's telescope-cameras, if she did not have other things that needed to be done. Else she would overshoot the station which, while not be a fatal error, would be inconvenient and rather embarrassing, and would possibly go into her permanent record. During the short conversation, Journey had covered almost a hundred thousand kilometers.

She dropped the empty coffee packet into the little waste bin, glanced around the cockpit for any unsecured objects; the inertial buffers did not always keep up under with real-space. There were none, as expected. Keeping everything secured at all times was the first thing a new fleet recruit learned.

Alice engaged the dump function, and Journey flickered out of existence, then dropped back to reality several thousand kilometers closer to station -- a final brush with the translation interface that bled off almost all of its remaining velocity. Alice glanced at scan, then at the helm plot, to be sure she was where she should be, and activated a series of pre-programmed routines. Journey rotated to present its aft segment toward the station, lit the main drive, and began to rapidly decelerate.

[Nova Atlantis]

Ria took another deep breath to calm his nerves as he immediately grabbed his pistol and switched on its flashlight. “What in the name of the gods have I gotten myself into?” he asked out loud. This hadn’t seemed like THAT bad of an idea when it was just an academic question. But he had figured there would at least be some sort of emergency lighting. And, well, there’s something to be said for underestimating the sheer pants-shittingly terrifying ability the darkness held. At least it was mundane darkness. Not the kind that moved. That followed you. That directed you. That---

No. Nononono. He wasn’t going to go there. This wasn’t Oblissa, and these weren’t…this wasn’t The War. The Demons were dead. They had all been killed. It had been a very near thing, but they no longer existed.

…But what if a ship or two had escaped? Through the viewport in the corner of his eye, he thought he saw…something. His heart skipped a beat, and he had to mentally punch himself. He was getting all worked up for nothing. Another look revealed that nothing was moving inside the window. Maybe.

“Ria”

“Gah!” Ria nearly had a heart attack at the sound of Xil’s voice over his suit intercom, “…Don’t…don’t fucking do that!”

He swore he heard a twinge of amusement as she continued, “My apologies. I just thought you’d like to know…I have been performing scans”

“What have you found?” Ria asked, calming himself by dividing his attention between the conversation and the directions for the airlock hatch. He wasn’t crazy about all the controls being down. Were they hit by some sort of EMP blast? But wouldn’t backup systems have been protected for just such an event—especially in a dwarf system like this. Ria had no idea if the star was a flare star, but for such a dim entity, it seemed like a good guess. Maybe this was just basic misfortune and lack of long-term planning.

But then why was there a beeping device tethered outside?

“I have been scanning the hull” Xil continued, “Half of it is…irradiated. Not to dangerous amounts, but there is a definite aberration to what should be there”

Ria paused his going over of the hatch instructions, “…Only half of the station? Maybe the star had a flareup?"

“I do not believe so. The star would not have gained power so rapidly, only to lose it. Flare activity normally lasts much longer'

The Knight stood back for a moment, “Okay, so, recap. No power, no response from the crew, creepy code machine outside, aaaand…a clear case of Radiation Does Not Work That Way”

“What are your recommendations?”

Ria sighed, “…To hell with protocol, I think I’m going to need a bigger gun. Ready the Raptor. Basic mods”

“Understood”

A few seconds later, a small assault rifle materialized on the floor—an upside to teleportation technology. Putting his pistol back on his belt and grabbing the ‘Raptor’, Ria decided now would be a good time to signal the other ship. While still working on the door, he opened a channel in his helmet, trying out his best attempt at Basic. He was a bit rusty, but he wasn’t half bad. A little broken in places, but overall competent.

---

“I’m onboard. Everything’s…dead. No lights, no nothing. I’m currently trying to get through the airlock hatch via manual override, but from what I can tell this station has lost everything. Not even basic emergency backup systems are operating. I see one, dim red light further down, but I have no idea what it’s for or how it’s working”

“…Oh, and feel free to scan the station’s hull for radiation if you want. I’d love to hear your theories on how that happened. I’m gonna finish bypassing the locks and try not to get eaten. Ria out”

---

Another deep breath to calm his nerves. He’d filled the chamber with air—but like hell he was taking his helmet off. Even besides the radiation, what if the air was contaminated somehow? Or worse? Shrugging more half-baked theories off, Ria pulled the door open, instantly regretting every second of it as the noise echoed through the pitch black station. For a split second he thought about giving up, but he was already committed. It would take time to return to his ship. “Shit shit shit shit shit shit” he muttered as he pulled the door all the way up. He was deep in it now—if anything was alive inside, it knew exactly where he was. There were no contacts on his suit’s sensors, but that did little to encourage him.

“Great” he sighed to himself, making a wide sweep with the flashlight on his gun, before gingerly stepping onto the station proper, “I’m so going to die horribly” He called out louder, in Basic, against his better judgement, "Hello? Anybody here?"

[Weyr]

Weyr Self-Defense Forces Ship AERC-CE-J09
Hyperlight Survey Vessel, Division 'Corinae'
System: Observation Post Alpha

The ship rattled and shook, as though about to come apart. Nestled deep within the cushions of the command chair, Alice did not feel a thing, amidst the myriad of consoles and screens -- helm and scan, and the compact green and orange readouts of internal systems, which flickered not at all. Journey was an antique even by Weyrean standards; some of its systems had been a state of perpetual breakdown since before Alice was born. The shower and life support had to give out at least once in every surveyor's career. But the essential systems, like the drive and the scan, and the interfaces to use them, those were maintained at all costs. Stripping down a drive was cheaper than replacing the entire ship, after all, and a failed inertial buffer left little for salvage.

Com flashed, indicating inbound message.

Will see what I can find out, ser Ria, but no promises. This scrapheap doesn't have much equipment of that sort.

"Viaggio, run a full scan of the station, please. Everything we got."

"Everything?"

"Everything," Alice bobbed her head in confirmation.

Journey's high-power active scanners were not even in the same class as those aboard Corinae. The survey-ship was designed for broad-scope data collection, not for detailed investigation. But it had a high-powered radar unit, and a few cantankerous and fragile passive arrays that she rarely used. They were of little use to a ship which collected most of its data from remote fly-by probes; but for close-range investigation they would be useful, if they worked. Alice wished she had thought to deploy them earlier; she was growing complacent, she thought, suddenly furious with herself. She had assumed Aphelion had the better scanners, and already knew everything she would. But there was no sense in worrying over the irreversible past, so long as she did not repeat mistakes.

She had the scanners deployed now. Powerful radar swept over the station; wispy antenna extruded from their pockmarked protective blisters, stretching translucent and shimmering across a hundred square meters, listening. If there was anything odd about the station's outer hull, or anything floating about it, or anything emanating from it, Alice would find out soon enough.

"Wonder if that red light's the emergency beacon?" Alice mused, while the scan results poured in.

"No," Viaggio replied instantly.

"Why not?"

"Because the beacon's floating next to the airlock ser Ria's using."

Alice shuddered at the implications, breathed an obscenity, putting together the implications. Was that emergency beacon part of the airlock assembly, or did someone manually toss it outside. The first made little sense; might as well bolt the thing to the hull, which was what Viaggio had assumed based on the signal's source. The second option was not much more sensible, and had rather unpleasant connotations. If power had been lost slowly, then the station crew could have sent a detailed distress call, like any reasonable people in an emergency situation; no need at all to go through the trouble of putting something through an airlock. If power had been lost quickly . . . Alice shuddered again. A station without power had to vent atmosphere whenever the airlocks were used; a station that small did not have much atmosphere to vent. And the beacon did have a cobbled-together look. But maybe she was just imagining things, Alice told herself, inferring things from a picture and a little unsettling information. There were many possibilities, and she was being melodramatic. A heroic crew struggling against time -- she had been alone too damn long, was the trouble, Alice insisted. A mind trained to act under the information-flood of translation could make some utterly bizzare connections, and reach conclusions which had no sane basis in reality.

What happened to the station crew -- finding that out would undoubtedly answer all of their questions. It was not a big station. Surely, Ria would encounter the crew, or would find their bodies, quite shortly.

Still, she quickly encapsulated her contact with Ria, and conclusions reached by scan, and sent an encrypted data burst toward the sub-etha beacon she had launched earlier. It would take time for the data to reach the beacon, which was no issue at all, to Alice's mind. The beacon would be deployed by then, and would send her information to Corinae, wherever it was. Just in case, Alice told herself.

"Put a data capsule together, just in case, please," she said.

"Way ahead of you, meatbag," Viaggio replied. But there seemed to be little enthusiasm in his taunt, though perhaps Alice was imagining things -- a pseudo-intelligence was not sapient, after all, and could not feel emotion in any sense of the term. Or perhaps the tone was meant to suggest that he agreed with her unspoken assessment: here was a situation with too many unknowns, where they did not know the names of the variables, much less the range of their probable values. Such a situation could spiral out of control all too fast.

[Sertian]

Station Interior

The dull red light provided little security against the darkness that had taken over the station. The only comfort it seemed to provide was likely dwarfed by the long, black shadows it cast, further tinted by the pale luminescence casting the once normal world of the facility in a strange, alien light - only banished for whatever radius of comforting white that Ria's flash light provided. Turning the corner, the Atlantian would see the source of that pale glow - a desk had become cluttered with a variety of components and devices, pried open with their electronic guts strewn across the table - while above a pale red emergency light flickered, casting its weak but persistent light across the room and the corridors beyond. The various devices strewn about seemed to come from a variety of sources, both from whatever personal equipment the crew had on hand, as well as components that seemed like they had been pried from the infrastructure of the facility itself.

But more disturbing of all was the sickening coat of substance that had been spilled across that table, splattering across its surface and the cobbling of devices arranged around the center. The dark, crimson stain gave no mystery as to what it was, spilled blood which had apparently been violently splashed across the table and dried. But intermixed with it was the half-digested and dissolved contents now thoroughly reeking the nearby air with its postulate stench.

Beyond, the rest of the station lay in darkness and quiet. Only broken by the occasional creek of metal resisting the pressure of atmosphere trying to pop the entire thing, as well as the supports straining against the slow rotation that gave the facility gravity.

Station Exterior

Initial scans of the station by the Hyperlight craft revealed much of what was already known. A two-part station, connected and sent into a long rotation to provide centrifugal force to simulate gravity for the people within. It was fairly tame, standard hull reinforced with whipple shield to protect it from the few micrometeorites which might challenge it at such a far distance from the star. No weapons to speak of, but it did possess a somewhat advanced communications array along the power core; which like the rest of the facility now lay quiet and dead. Curiously, for the station's intended function, there were no advanced sensor equipment beyond the standard one might expect for the station's intended role.

One didn't have to look far to see where they were, though. Floating several hundred meters from the station in an identical orbit to the facility, a small group of large sensor arrays had their delicate equipment pointed towards the closest star, a bright white spec that contained the civilization that all this was set up to study. However, as the Hyperlight craft's radar pinged and returned, another nearby object was brought up to its sensors. An oblong object, just smaller than two-meters in length, floating away from the station at a snail's pace. It was the center of a small field of crystallized water, floating in an imperceptible cloud around the dessicated husk of a man.

[Weyr]

Weyr Self-Defense Forces Ship AERC-CE-J09 - 'Journey-09'
Hyperlight Survey Vessel, Division 'Corinae'
System: Observation Post Alpha

"Oh, bugger," Alice whispered, her eyes glued to the telescope output as the corpse slowly rotated in its gentle drift away from the station. Ice crystals sparkled around it, catching the baleful light of the local sun. Her hand drifted up to her mouth, unnoticed. She zoomed in one-handed, panned from the feet up to the head, looking for anything unusual. The eyes seemingly-moved, staring at her through the screen, and Alice gasped and bit down on her finger, hard, winced and pulled it out of her mouth, the spell broken. On screen, the corpse kept slowly revolving.

It was just a trick of the light, she told herself, rubbing the injured finger. She moved the image to the corner of a side-display, gave Viaggio back control of the telescope. The pseudo-intelligence could check up on anything radar and scan found much faster than she. It. would tell her if anything interesting showed up. Like that body. It would take a trained pathologist to tell if the man had been dead before going out the airlock. But assuming her numbers were right, he had gone out the airlock at the same time as the beacon.

Perhaps it was a suicide. Perhaps the station crew did not have cold storage for the dead -- a body decomposed quite quickly and very messily in a closed environment, whatever its filtering. Using an airlock to space both a beacon and a body made sense. There was no reason, no reason at all to conclude that a man had chosen -- been sent? -- to deploy a beacon without a spacesuit. Alice hoped sincerely that Ria would find some answers on the station. Positive answers.

She punched up com, took a deep breath. It would not do to sound rattled, especially when everything she said was being recorded.

Ne, ser Ria? No clue what the deal is with the radiation, sorry. Gotta wait for the carrier to sort that out. But think we found the guy who goes with the distress beacon. Afraid he took a walk without his suit. So, how're things on your end?

[Nova Atlantis]

Red light. The worst kind of light. The dimmest, creepiest light there was. He never understood why emergency lights were always red. Did it really take up that much more energy to use something else on the color spectrum? He had never found them practical in use.

Of course, part of his ranting was simply the fact that he was creeped the fuck out. This feeling was only made worse when his eyes went from the emergency light down to the desk. As he began investigating the multitude of devices left behind, Alice’s voice filled his helmet. He was thankful for the company, it made the whole situation slightly less awful.

…Wait, what was that about a body? The Atlantean shook the thought off. It made sense anyway, as macabre as it was. But what in the galaxy would convince someone that leaving the station without a suit was a good thing? Maybe he had been right to keep his helmet on. Maybe there was something in the air.

“Haven’t found much yet” Ria said over the com, as he picked up a control panel he was sure had been ripped out of the wall somewhere, “Just a bunch of…I guess personal pet projects. Lots of little hodgepodge gadgets half-ripped apart. At least a couple look like they were installed somewhere else on the station, but I—” he paused. It hadn’t been very apparent under the red light, but his flashlight’s gaze was more than enough to make him realize there was something very, very wrong with the table. It wasn’t supposed to be that color. Or that texture. A slow, horrible, dawning comprehension crawled over Ria. His eyes widened in horror as he stepped back, a sinking feeling washing over him, “What in the name of…oh. Oh sweet merciful crap-nuggets”

Ria immediately pulled his gun into a combat pose, swinging himself around in a three-hundred sixty arc, illuminating his general vicinity. Then he did it again. Part of it was to see if he could find a body. Part of it was just making sure he wasn’t being hunted. He wasn’t reassured. Remembering he was still in the middle of a conversation, he spoke up again, glancing back at the table, “I uh…there’s blood all over the table. Lots of blood. Everywhere. And…chunks. I’m not sure what they were from; they look like they’ve been half-dissolved.”

At this point, Ria couldn’t come up with a single scenario for what might have happened. All he knew was that it could not have been peaceful. “They were working on something in a panic. And then…something died. Or someone. I dunno. I’m going to see if I can’t find the emergency power generator. Failing that, maybe I can jerry-rig something. Maybe link it up to my shuttle. I dunno, but I think getting ahold of logs would be our best bet”

Ria found he was slightly shaking. Just…the thought that something was following him, hunting him…he knew the wisest course would be to return to the ship, but damnitall, curiosity. And for better or worse, Ria hated abandoning missions once embarked upon. Besides, if this was anything like the movies, whatever was on this station –if there was something—would likely intercept him on his way back.

Then again, the fact he was still alive was a good sign. Maybe the crew just…went crazy.

…Yeah, he didn’t buy that either.

[Weyr]

Alice listened quietly to Ria's almost-rambling monologue. Midway through, she had adjusted Journey's course slightly, to forgo much of the usual post-deceleration maneuvering. Such an approach was contrary to regulations -- if her numbers were wrong, Journey would make a rather big dent in the station hull. But Alice trusted her numbers, and suspected that getting onto the station was more important than regs. Ria seemed to not be taking the situation well; a physical presence tended to help in such situations.

She wished she had a camera feed from Ria; perhaps his suit did not have such functionality, or perhaps was incapable of broadcast-only function. It forced her to rely too much on imagination to fill in an awfully incomplete narrative, provided by one who seemed rather disturbed by whatever he was seeing. She did not like the reference to ' chunks' one single bit, unless Ria had had a rather awful experience with a can of soup at some point, as Viaggio was suggesting via text-chat. That side-conversation was utterly not in keeping with the gravity of the situation Ria seemed to be in.

"Good plan, ser Ria," Alice said softly. "Can you get to the power plant? It probably went into emergency shutdown. These fission piles don't go quietly when they fail, and I'm not seeing any big radiation bloom or damage to that segment. Ano . . . think whatever did this is still aboard?"

[BluSkyy]

Revelation 22:18 Fair warning
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

[Sertian]

Out of the corner of his eye, Ria might catch another clue after he had calmed down from the sudden shock of seeing the 'mess' spilled onto the table of cannibalized parts. Drops and trails of blood had splattered there way away from the table, marking a path deeper into the dark station. As far as he could tell, there was only the one trail leaving the massive mess he had found.

Along the sides of the corridors leading deeper into the station was also markings and signs, guiding ones' way throughout the facility if it was ever needed. It identified the air lock he had just used as Airlock 02, while the path of blood seemed to be moving towards the habitation and recreation areas of the station.

[Nova Atlantis]

The Atlantean shined his flashlight around the room, looking for the directions to the power plant. References to an ‘Airlock 2’ were unhelpful. Alice’s comments reassured him to an extent—the core was likely undamaged and intact. With any luck, he wouldn’t have any problem getting it to reactivate.

…Provided he could find it.

His flashlight focused on a sign that pointed to the habitation section of the ship. Lowering his flashlight, Ria noticed a staggered but distinct trail of splattered blood leading from what he now associated as a lab towards the habitation area.

“Think whatever did this is still aboard?"

Ria nodded solemnly, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “…Yes. Yes, I do.” Steeling his courage, he readied his gun and headed deeper into the station, following the blood trail. It wasn’t engineering, but maybe it was on the way—it was still the best lead at the moment. And if there was something on this station, it was best to take care of it now. Regardless of anything, Ria had what the station staff didn’t—powered body armor, an AI, orichalic-enhanced abilities, and a big gun. “Slight change of plans. I’m going hunting”

[Weyr]

She could not very well tell Ria to get back into his ship, so that they could spend the next several days playing Go in safety. People might still be alive on the station, and some of them might not be murderers. Undoubtedly Ria would refuse her suggestion, judging by the tone of his voice. And she had a duty to Corinae to fully investigate the situation; relying on a second-hand account would be inadequate. Perhaps some of the station crew had simply gone around the bend in a truly horrifying way, but perhaps there was something worse at work, that could threaten the carrier. She had to find out as much as possible, so that the Captain could decide on the proper course of action. Bad information could kill just as surely as a missile.

Of course, she did not wish for anyone to die needlessly, whether station crew or Ria. But it was only a happy coincidence that her duty and her wishes dovetailed so neatly, Alice told herself. Which is why there was nothing at all wrong with what she planned to do.

"Just don't get eaten, ser Ria. Or the Captain will have my hide."

The drive cut out, vibrations ceased. Journey had matched vectors with the station. Alice allowed herself a moment to relax, unclenching muscles she had not realized were tense, laying back in the cushions and listening to the sounds of Journey's routine operations, staring out past the displays and consoles at the rotating torus of the station. She could have lain there for hours, listening to the soft creaking of the hull, and the faint sigh and gurgling of life support, amidst the steady glow of the screens. But there was work to do.

The numbers matched expectations, and Alice activated the program for Journey's final approach. She had approached as close as she dared to the station using Journey's main drive; the remaining distance would be covered by maneuver thrusters alone. Which was no loss at all, Alice reminded herself, releasing the buckles of her harness, and stretching luxuriously. She would need the remaining minute to get suited; unlike the gentleman outside, Alice understood that a body could not breathe vacuum. But undoubtedly he had had the same appreciation, and had gone outside anyway -- a sobering thought, which wiped away any sense of joviality at the situation.

Ria thought that there was someone capable of killing his fellow crew loose on the station, and Alice was quite certain that that person was not innocent in the fate of the dead man floating out there. That was no laughing matter. She slid out of the cushioned seat, grabbed a little data-disk from a cockpit console, and rushed aft to change.

[Sertian]

To Ria's disgust, the trail of blood didn't keep itself to the crisp, red stains as he hunted the clues leading deeper into the recreation areas of the ship. The droplets of life blood slowing occasionally, growing fainter, before renewing in another disgusting concoction of blood and wretched vile that had been splattered across the floor, renewing the trail with gusto. To his surprise, a few such splotches were marred, as if a slow, lumbering foot had shimmied its way through the gunk on its way towards what the knight could only guess was the air lock some time ago.

The station itself did little to help him either. While lit and with the soft clatter of daily business, it might have been a homely enough place. But while dark every obstruction and object cast a long gaze, threatening to hide something just out of reach of the explorer's light. And it didn't help that the station's construction curved the floor ever so slightly to accommodate the rotational force which created its gravity, a sleight adjustment that would likely cause someone not familiar with it to be prone to stumbling and tripping over their feet all to easily. And all the while, his only company besides the words of his new friend, where the quiet creaks of a dead station, interspersed by the occasional sharp bang echoing from somewhere deep within its halls.

The trail, meanwhile, continued on as the colored paths to different sections diverged with the halls; habitation running off to the left, while the sickly trail sprawled right towards the blue line signaling the medical bay. Continuing with the hunt would eventually bring him to the clinic's doors, sealed from the inside as far as he could tell.

All the while, outside of the station the vast quietness of space remained. Lingering in the background and only broken by the two investigator's communications.

[Nova Atlantis]

"Just don't get eaten, ser Ria. Or the Captain will have my hide."

Yeah. He’d get right on that. Ria swept the halls with his flashlight, following the trail of blood. And…more chunks. Great. That was just what he wanted to see more of.

…No, seriously, what in the name of the gods did this? This couldn’t have been done by humanoids. Not unless they had some sort of flesh-melting weapon on their hands. A shiver went down his spine—he did NOT want to be on the wrong end of a weapon like that. As he kept following, he noticed a foot pattern of sorts, heading off back the other direction to…oh hell. The airlock, of course. “More organic slurry. I think I found the footprints of our friend outside though. Doesn’t look like he walked too fast. Or well, for that matter. And the gods only know why you’d wade through what I can only assume is the slushy remains of your buddies” The disgust in Ria’s voice was clear. The man was becoming a irate at the whole situation. Remains everywhere. He—

---
The soldier next to Ria screamed as his torso was splintered open, his still-conscious husk falling apart as he hit the ground. Gunfire was neverending, but it was as if it wasn’t hitting anything. The Enemy moved around them like whisps of air, impaling and incinerating the boarding party with ease. It was like a massacre. Everyone was dying. He couldn’t even see the Enemy. A talon here, a black indefinite mass there. A formless eldritch horror solely focused on death. A predatory mouth of dripping ichor. A scorpion-like whip that stabbed another soldier and flung him into the wall. Was it a wall? It was just as black and aethery as the Enemy. One that moved and flowed just like them, boxing them in for the slaughter. Screams. Crying. Panicked pleas of help. Blood flowing everywhere. An entire boarding party, reduced to frightened cattle in the span of seconds. One of the whips grazed Ria in the side of his abdomen, tearing apart his armor like it wasn’t even there. Searing pain flowed over his nearly-immobilized body as he collapsed to the ground, facefirst into the pool of blood. Was it his? He didn’t know. Everything was losing focus. He could still hear the low thundering sounds of the Enemy ship glassing the colony world below. He---
---

Ria was pulled out of his memories by nearly tripping over the station’s obvious curve. Because evidently whoever owned this station couldn’t afford to put in an artificial gravity generator, they had to go with prehistoric models like this. Goddamn primitives. No…no, he didn’t mean that. Swinging his flashlight along the ground to make sure he didn’t trip again, Ria nearly jumped out of his skin when he suddenly heared a loud banging noise coming from somewhere else in the station. A cold chill crept over Ria—he really wasn’t alone.

“Sweet shit, what was that?!” he said, spinning around, flashlight in hand. Still nothing. Nothing on sensors either. Except…wait. For the first time, Ria’s suit WAS reading something up ahead. Life signs. Of what, he couldn’t tell. Too much interference—they were probably behind some pretty thick barriers. People, maybe? Or zombies. “Creepy distress beacons with suitless husks outside, blood slurry coating the floor and desks, sixth tier science fair projects made out of electronics ripped right out of the wall, abnormal radiation spikes, a power generator that shouldn’t be offline, and now loud banging noises. I swear to the gods, this place is like the Funhouse of the Damned. And I’ve got lifesigns up ahead, right where The Blood Trail is leading me. And my money is on zombified researchers. Or some sort of eldritch horror from beyond the stars. Or maybe they were breeding some sort of creature that got out of control. Because I know that Abominations in the eyes of the Gods would just tie the whole theme together”

Ria sighed, resuming his trek towards what soon became apparent as the medical bay. It wasn’t engineering, but maybe he’d get some answers. Or zombies. Looking over the door, he soon found he couldn’t open it.

“The lifesigns are coming from the med bay. The door, I think is barricaded shut. Hang on” Ria, once again against his better judgement, pounded on the door, “Hey! Come on out, it’s okay. I’m Knight Ria, I’m with the Imperial Atlantean Forces. I’m here to get you out of here. Can you come out of there? Can we talk?”

[Weyr]

Four rewrites and rather late, but at least no-one will have to read through four paragraphs of Alice putting on a singlesuit.

---

She opened Journey's hatch, and looked through the filmy forcefield at the floodlit airlock door a meter or so away -- closed, just like on vid, seeming to wobble slightly as Viaggio struggled to maintain alignment with the station's rotating torus. Alice considered the distance, and hesitated. Ria was about to find out whether these 'life signs' were survivors, or something much worse. She could wait a few minutes before committing to a course of action which was by all rights well beyond her training and expertise. A murder scene was best left to experts, not to a surveyor and . . . whatever Ria was. Alice was not prepared to fool herself sufficiently to presume, without any real evidence, that Ria knew precisely what he was doing. Especially if his speculation was more than idle fancy. He was undoubtedly just exaggerating, rambling as a way to handle a situation that was gruesome, but not at all supernatural in origin. Alice had seen quite enough of that in her admittedly-short life.

All that passed through her head in a matter of seconds; a surveyor had to think fast to survive translation into an unknown system. Alice shook her head, and focused her thoughts. She had a job to do, which did not involve dilly-dallying. She quickly ran through the items and tools in her pockets and clipped her belt. Everything she expected to need was there, including the gun holstered at her hip, which she had hesitated to bring -- a stray shot from the antipersonnel pistol could easily blow a hole in the station, with very unfortunate results. But it was better to have a tool and not need it, and a gun was no more than a tool, Alice had told herself. She mentally shook herself again -- she was threatening to stray off on tangents.

Alice grabbed the handlebars bracketing the little hatch, took a breath, and lightly leapt across the gap between ship and station, to land in the shallow recess housing the airlock. She swayed for a moment, unbalanced by the difference in forces, mild though it was, letting her senses sort themselves out, then got to work. A cursory inspection showed that it was most definitely locked. Viaggio was watching her on vid; she did not bother to narrate what she was doing. The pseudo-intelligence was under strict instructions to put on velocity and get out if anything happened, regardless of what Journey's main drive would do to an unshielded body at this range. An EVA coverall was designed to protect against 'typical' particle and radiation hazard, not a fusion torch; a singlesuit offered no protection at all against most any real hazard.

She rapped on the airlock hatch with her fist, and peered inside through the little porthole, using the helmet-mounted lamps to try and illuminate the space beyond. If there was nothing there, then she would proceed to try and open it.

[Sertian]

Despite whatever gruesome horrors Alice might have imagined, the air lock was clear. Her vision showing that the inner air lock door was also closed – and if she was very lucky the room was unpressurized, meaning she wouldn't have to brace against the escape of atmosphere as she opened the door. Fortunately, at least, there were plenty of rungs that she could use to brace or anchor herself too as she went about wrenching the heavy, outer door open..

---

There was an obvious sound of something moving behind the door, the clatter of a metal tray falling and spilling its contents across the floor to greet his ears. Hushed, worried whispers exchanged if the on-board systems of his suit were advanced enough to pierce the bay's door to hear them. A few seconds passed, then a few more, until finally a worried voice called back. “W- What are you and what are you doing here?”

[Weyr]

"Looks like no-one's home," Alice murmured. Whatever horrors awaited, they were not in the habit of hiding in airlocks. "Alright. Let's do this. Shut the hatch please."

"You're one crazy meatbag. Closing." If anything unfriendly came through the airlock -- unlikely, but not impossible, it would not be able to rush inside the ship.

"That's Miss Meatbag to you," Alice said, running her hands over the control panel -- dead, just as Ria had said. So were the monitors for pressure and hatch status, which on any sanely-built station would have been battery-powered. Knowing whether there was atmosphere on the other side of a hatch, and whether the inner hatch was properly sealed, was rather important when one most vehemently did not wish to vent the entire station. EMP pulse? she wondered idly. She had little knowledge of such things as they pertained to electronics; most things Weyrean did not run on electricity.

She hooked one foot in a deck-side rung, for whatever good it would do if the inner seal blew. Alice planned to open the airlock slowly, if she had any choice in the matter, assuming it worked at all. She would feel like a complete idiot if the mechanism was stuck.